Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Why the hell doesn't the home button blink for notifications yet?
- Thread starter Calidude
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
As all of you should now, Blackberry's have had his for years and it's a very useful function. It's multicolored to tell you what's waiting.
The home button is the wrong place for it though. RIM had it on a top corner visible while the phone was holstered. I know many people carry their iPhones in different ways so there probably is no totally right way to do this. But it's been missing for a long time from Apple devices. Very good suggestion!
The home button is the wrong place for it though. RIM had it on a top corner visible while the phone was holstered. I know many people carry their iPhones in different ways so there probably is no totally right way to do this. But it's been missing for a long time from Apple devices. Very good suggestion!
Apple is far from having alerts covered. You must not have ever used a Blackberry or Android and are just willing to settle for what ever bone that Apple cares to throw at you!
----------
That is not good enough. It is sad but Apple thinks they are actually fixing something by doing this. They seem rather stubborn. Oh, forgot, its a Apple product!
HP TouchPad has a LED notification light in the home button..
There's a patch to do the same on older WebOS devices too..
Attachments
That's a great idea, but unfortunately, i just have that feeling that Apple doesn't have that up their sleeves this time around. Maybe next time :l
The iPhone home button doesn't blink for notifications because it doesn't have a light in it. (ba-dum-tshhhh)
Honestly if the iPhone gets a notification light, I'd wind up turning mine off. Why? Because I've had that feature on my Nexus One via either the trackball or the charge light (both have RGB LED's and apps to customize what color a given type of notification would give you, like you could have red for Gmail, green for SMS, blue for Facebook, etc). After a while it just got annoying, and the trackball light wound up waking me up a few times (the charge LED didn't). I dunno, I found it to get in the way of using my smartphone. There was definitely battery drain, but I'm sure Apple could mitigate that somehow on the iPhone. I dunno.. If I want to know if I have a notification (at least on Android) I turn the phone on and check the status bar icons. In iOS 5 you can just pop the wake button once and quickly turn it back off, everything's on the lockscreen.
Honestly if the iPhone gets a notification light, I'd wind up turning mine off. Why? Because I've had that feature on my Nexus One via either the trackball or the charge light (both have RGB LED's and apps to customize what color a given type of notification would give you, like you could have red for Gmail, green for SMS, blue for Facebook, etc). After a while it just got annoying, and the trackball light wound up waking me up a few times (the charge LED didn't). I dunno, I found it to get in the way of using my smartphone. There was definitely battery drain, but I'm sure Apple could mitigate that somehow on the iPhone. I dunno.. If I want to know if I have a notification (at least on Android) I turn the phone on and check the status bar icons. In iOS 5 you can just pop the wake button once and quickly turn it back off, everything's on the lockscreen.
I'll agree that there's definitely some drawbacks to using the LED, such as looking at your phone moreso than you normally would, a slight battery drain from both using the phone more and the LED power, and unneeded attention from other people looking at your LED blink.
Personally, I would not use it ALL the time, but if I'm really expecting something like an important email or text while I'm busy, I'll know to turn that feature on when I need more cues to keep me notified.
The important thing is that the LED would be completely optional so everybody is satisfied no matter what. I'm shocked that 43 people have already said no, but I bet most of those 43 people are knee-jerk reactionaries who think they'll be blinded by an annoying light they can't turn off.
How could the trackball light wake you up? Come on!
If you do not want I am sure that Apple will have the option to disable for you "light" sleepers!
Apple is far from having alerts covered. You must not have ever used a Blackberry or Android and are just willing to settle for what ever bone that Apple cares to throw at you!
I have used Android, never found any benefit of the notification light over what my 3GS does. It's my natural response to press a button on my phone when I pick it up, so the screen tells me what I need to know.
How could the trackball light wake you up? Come on!
If you do not want I am sure that Apple will have the option to disable for you "light" sleepers!
The N1 trackball is pretty bright, in an unlit room at night it definitely bathed alot of the room in more light than a bathroom night light. The amount of light at night is what made me switch to the charging LED for notifications. I'm a pretty heavy sleeper, rest assured that trackball light is no joke.
----------
The other annoying part was how the Android notification system worked with the trackball light. I had mine set to loosely give me the color of the app icon which is trying to notify me (green for SMS, red for Gmail, blue for Facebook, white for missed calls). What winds up happening is you get about 2 seconds between pulses for each alert.
So here's the scenario with that. I leave my phone on my desk if I ever go into a meeting. Let's say I get a call from home, and SMS from someone, Gmail has incoming messages, and someone sent me something on Facbeook. It takes 10 seconds for the trackball to alert me of all of this.
Phone.. wait.. SMS.. wait.. Gmail.. wait.. Facebook.. Phone.. etc.. I always wait for it to loop once. 10 seconds. Now I just turn the device on and then off again. Less than 2 seconds. iOS 5 has one up on that because it gives you the actual text of SMS messages or subjects from Email, who you missed a call from, etc. To me that's easier and more efficient.
Agree completely on this. Blackberry has had alerts for almost a decade that would still blow away the iOS5 notification system. I understand the whole clean interface and not too complex style but seriously not having some type of notification so you don't have to constantly push the home button is just plain weak.
The same is true on the calendering. I love my iPhone but not being able to forward an invite or dial from the Location bar is inexcusable at this point.
It sounds like they included this software feature in iOS 5 for the iPhone 5 as a notification light.
But the iPhone 4 can also use it because of the camera LED flash on the back.
Apple is all about keeping things secret. So at the same time they can act like its only available for the camera LED flash on the back.
See "LED Flash for Alerts" below:
That's a cool idea. Whether it's the home button or somewhere else on the front, I'd love to see and LED indicator on the next iPhone
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_8 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E401 Safari/6533.18.5)
this LED in the home button is awesome...
http://www.behance.net/gallery/iphone-5-concept/1617083
this LED in the home button is awesome...
http://www.behance.net/gallery/iphone-5-concept/1617083
Not really. It does too much. All it needs to do is notify you of events in the OS.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_8 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E401 Safari/6533.18.5)
the implementation of it. no need for charging/full charge alert..but the concept of subtle colors for different notifications
Calidude said:
the implementation of it. no need for charging/full charge alert..but the concept of subtle colors for different notifications